Ishmael Character Analysis

”At first she just listened to me, and then gradually started asking questions to make me talk about the lives I had lived….‘None of these things are your fault,’ she would always say…I heard that phrase from every staff member--and frankly I had always hated it--I began that day to believe it.(164)” Ishmael Beah was a 12-year-old boy living in Sierra Leone at the beginning of the book. Sierra Leone was having a war which concluded too many people dying, and running trying to survive. Ishmael Beah joined the war from being 13 years old to 15 years old, he was drugged to have more energy and brainwashed to have the mindset to kill. Ishmael Beah uses characterization in order to show how Ishmael struggles to change from a child trying to survive, to a drugged ruthless soldier who must recover in rehabilitation.

As mentioned previously, the first factor of this “coming of age” story is the experience of a crisis. In all fairness, Ishmael’s whole childhood was a crisis. He lived a crisis every day to the point where taking the lives of other, and watching the blood shed of his peers was not worth thinking much of, because he knew it would happen again. The young men would give their best effort at being kids but there was never enough time. Ishmael says, “Sometimes we were asked to leave for war in the middle of a movie. We would come back hours later after killing many people and continue the movie as if we had just returned from intermission. we were always either at the front lines, watching a war movie, or doing drugs. There was no time to be alone or to think,” (Beah 124). This is the life that so many 12 year old boys were living and to this day, just like Ishmael, they are left scarred from the events

Almost as if he didn’t want to be saved from his life. Could he possibly not know a better life existed? Even when he was not on the battlefield, the hatred and anger overtook him. One quote is particularly chilling “we needed the violence to cheer us” (Beah 274). It is heartbreaking that a child could be so damaged.

At first they are children therefore naïve and scared of war. So it becomes a constant process of changing their emotions. Ishmael says “When the soldier stood in front of me, I avoided eye contact, so he straightened my head until my eyes met his. He gave me the gun. I held it in my trembling hands. He then added the magazine, and I shook even more” (109). The war leaders know this so they begin convincing them this is their war by depicting the enemy as the cause of the pain. Lieutenant says to them “‘some of you are here because they have killed your parents or families, others because this is a safe place to be … we need the help of able boys and men to fight these rebels ‘“(106). The kids now feel helpless since they are faced with the ultimatum of either leaving with no rations or fighting for the cause. All things considered they have no choice but to join this war. Now that they have agreed they had to ensure they detested enemies and felt nothing when killing. Lieutenant said “’ they have lost everything that makes them human, they do not deserve to live. That is why we must kill every single one of them…’” (108). ironically, that quote is essentially what the soldiers are doing to the kids verbalized. After a while the army breaks the children and they have lost all of their innocence and all that is left is war hardened. Beah says “I could become angry, yes, begin to visualize

Far from making men out of boys, war in this narrative takes decent humans and brutalizes and dehumanizes them. There are battle scenes,

In order to acclimate children to war and mold them into effective killing machines, Lieutenant Jabati and his men employ several different tacts: drugs, pop culture, and several modes of emotional manipulation. Being forced into a national army, Beah learns to adapt his body to several drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and several other drugs (Mackey 116). Beah is taking drugs in order to numb his mind for upcoming and past raids. Additionally, he describes the multitude of drugs he and other children take to make traumatizing moments bearable. Beah describes his first raid by explaining how he “took turns at the guarding posts around the village, smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown, cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which was always spread out on the table, and of course taking more of the white capsules as I had become addicted to them” (Beah 121). Without the drugs, Beah becomes aggressive and the boys resort to raiding the hospital to quell their hunger. When the drugs wear off, Beah’s headaches return and so do the images of slaughter. Due to children having to fight in combat for Sierra Leone, children often became addicted to drugs thus, hurting their childhood and eventual future. Child soldiers in Africa were often drugged for battle, but often faced side effects that they were not accustomed to. (Goyal 31). When Beah is

(Beah 23) He describes how intimidating and alarming each bullet was and how horrific each shot exploded throughout his being. But not only did Beah experience war as a child, he also lost his childhood and innocence. “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector and my rule was to kill or be killed… I felt no pity for anyone. My childhood had gone by without my knowing, and it seemed as if my heart had frozen.”

Quickly though, Beah became used to the lifestyle as it benefited him; becoming a solider provided him with food, clothes, shelter and a family. His new family was made out of many other young boy soldiers who he thought of to be his brother. Beah’s role models became his lieutenants due to the great power and authority they had over the young boys, some boys so young they could not even hold guns. Soon Beah was killing men left and right without feeling any emotions. The war was intense though for many boys, so using marijuana, cocaine and other narcotics was an easy way for the boys to forget about the crimes they committed (Beah

106-107). One of the other boys response to the ultimatum was “It is better to stay here for now. We had no choice. Leaving the village was as good as being dead” (p. 107). The lieutenant’s weapon was instilling them with fear and telling them that the only way you could stay alive was if you joined their forces. Of course, the men and young boys complied with the lieutenant because their first thoughts were this is life or death. What Ishmael did not know when he was a child soldier was he was being drugged. Before going to war, they would give them white tablets to boost their energy. The boys free time consisted of “...smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown, cocaine mixed with gunpowder, which was always spread out on the table, and of course taking more of the white capsules, as I had become addicted to them” (p. 121). First of all, a 13 year old boy should not be smoking marijuana, sniffing brown brown,and cocaine mixed with gunpowder. Those drugs are lethal and he could have been killed by

“My entire body went into shock. Only my eyes moved, slowly opening and closing” (Ishmael Beah 18). Ishmael had just found his family's ashes in their house, that burned down. In a Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah was separated from his family at twelve years old when his town, in Africa, was attacked. When he was eighteen years old, he went through many challenges of being a soldier in the Sierra Leone Civil War. He got through most of his days with the power of alcohol, drugs, and marijuana. Throughout A Long way Gone Ishmael lost, and partially regained his innocence, his will to survive weakened, and the damage of war continued to get worse. Ishmael Beah's theme is survival, and manipulation. Ishmael did whatever he needed to survive, and he was also manipulated during the war to take drugs, drink alcohol, and smoke marijuana.

Childrens were given no choice they had to become soldiers to get food and shelter.

One who succumbs under the harshness of facing adversity is Eliezer Wiesel. For instance, on his way to a concentration camp, he sees the bodies of babies and children being burned in a ditch: "For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name? The Eternal Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?” (31). When Elie asks, “Why should I bless His name?”, after witnessing this catastrophe, his apostasy grows stronger. As he experiences the Nazis punishments, his ultimate trust in God diminishes into conflicts with what he should truly believe in. Furthermore, when Elie finally reaches the last concentration camp and wakes up, he thinks about looking for his missing father,

Ishmael is as guilty as he is male. When Ishmael was twelve years old his village was attacked while he was away performing in a rap group. From there he then went on with his friends wandering from village to village doing what is needed for their survival. Eventually he goes on to become a soldier, raiding rebel camps and making wrong choices. As a soldier he starts to kill people, after some time he stops feeling guilty and turns violent, he starts taking drugs as well, so often that it becomes something his body needs.

Once the boy comes upon the soldiers retreating from battle, he pretends to lead them onward with his sword. The fact that he is pretending to lead them is significant in and of itself. Young men are thrown into war, and move up the ranks quickly due to causalities. They are often young and inexperienced, and catapulted into roles of leadership. Not having the experience to know how to be a leader, they pretend to be the leaders in the overdramatized, delusional war tales of heroism and patriotism, just as the boy did. He even tries to play with the soldiers, as they “reminded him of the painted clown whom he had seen last summer in the circus” (Bierce, 58-59). Just as inexperienced young officers enter the war with delusions of grandeur, oblivious of the realities of war, the boy is also oblivious of the grotesque situation he has come upon. The boy eventually found his way back to his home, which he found destroyed. Many of the leaders of the Civil War led their men across their own country, bruised, bloodied and battered, only to return to their own homes, which were destroyed by war, as well.

One who may be viewed as evil is someone who enjoys hurting others and may not think about the consequences their actions towards someone or something may do to harm or affect the people around them. Through the book “Z for Zachariah” written by Robert O'Brien one of the two main characters Mr Loomis some may consider as evil. The other main character is young female called Ann who lives on her own until Mr Loomis entered the valley. Through the book, Mr Loomis has proven to be evil firstly because he had attempted to shoot Ann while she was doing him a favour because he had driven Ann out of her own home by an attempt of rape she came back each day to the garden to take care of the plants and animals giving him half the resources and the other